Marshall
McLuhan and Harvest of Gems
Dear
Team:
We are deep in the middle of Drubchen. This is the Tibetan equivalent
of starting up a big psychic reactor and turning on the switch.
Mantras are recited 24 hours a day for ten days in order to
flush out psychic wastes on the planet. It's intense and sometimes
uplifting. Often an ordeal, but psychic waste management is
never easy....
The
planning for the promotion of Harvest of Gems has forced me
to articulate the message of this complex work in a new way.
The work of Marshall Mcluhan the Canadian media and communications
genius has allowed me to find a new way to make sense of Harvest
within a wider Western context.
Mcluhan
saw that holistic awareness was crucial in all mandala-like
visions. This is now demanded in this information age of media
overload. You need to look for the hidden structure of things
by focusing on multiple angles and finding new visions through
this process. You scan for patterns.
The
loss of personal identityi in this increasingly speedy life
leads to violence. This loss of identity is now our new collective
identity. It's very ironic. Cognition-recognition cycles are
speeding up and this creates more angles for understanding this
speed-up process. We live now in a world of total resonance.
Our public and private space is being invaded at an ever faster
rate. But this whole world with its total resonance is also
now at your fingertips.
Psychic
insurance is needed. It is achieved through art. It engages
all the senses. Meditation gives more insurance, but of a spiritual
kind. A cognitive and spiritual unity is achieved which can
be very flexible. Mandala thinking is instant and symultaneous.
This is great. Especially for our dissolving Western civilization.
McLuhan explored both sdhaman and inner space through the media
by writing in wild juxtapositions. McLuhan was looking for a
multi-sensory language for an increasing multi-sensory world.
The new media was creating a retribalization and all of us were
be thrust together HERE and NOW. The world needed to be remade
with all the old senses. McLuhan wrote with a multi-sensory
collage/montage style.
The
media's effects wre more important often than the content itself.
We now need to make the new and not match the old. The new extensions
of the media were creating new psychic spaces. As we now plunge
into the cyber realms are lives are becoming increasingly psychic.
All kinds of boundaries are dissolving. Everything is now immediate
as our left-brain world increasingly flips into a right-brain
world. Indeed our left-brain worls is being pushed now at the
speed of light. This is creating the flip. How much new tribal
involvement and how much new private identity?
Reality
and the symbol of it. Which is more real nowadays? McLuhan in
his writings used free-association to understand the current
cognitive speed-up and its space-out effect. McLuhan attempted
a massive recalibration and feedback leap in his mind in order
to deal with the new realities of the speedy media age. The
inner quickness of the mind was being extended outward now to
create a high-speed civilization. This is why today people everywhere
are looking for new forms of psychic survival in art, ESP, the
occult, and meditation. In a very crude way we are now entering
the biggest spiritual age of our times. The media and the mind
sciences are the new initiations needed for our new psychic
world.
McLuhan
made intuitive leaps between the jigsaw pieces that he saw.
He did not build bridges. There was simply no time for this.
McLuhan saw the need for a right-brain strategy for an increasingly
right-brain world. Left-brain strategies now just created alethal
form of schizophrenia. Symultaneous comprehension was needed
now. You needed to look at the invisible around the visible
without thinking too much. Divination was replacing logic. McLuhan
saw the subliminal as crucial despite its slipperiness. The
mind needed to be used as a divination tool.
McLuhan
used his personal subconscious in an artistic way to see where
the collective " unconscious " was going. Wild juxtapositions
led to creative trance and big vision. Resonant intervals led
to all directions at once. The senses needed to not be divided.
Allcould be remembered and surfed. You didn't stay divided and
adrift with this new kind of perception. The content of the
old media became visibal in the new media. Right-brain thought
thrived on the empty spaces between things. Vision was found
there and things could be changed quickly.
So
let's leap again:
All
mandala-like vision is holistic. This is critical as the speed-up
of life goes on along with its massive identity loss. One needs
the worlds's resonance at one's finger-tips. Psychic insurance
and cognitive unity is gained through art and meditation. This
double insurance is not a luxury in today's speedy global world
where all minds collide now with increasing frequency at the
speed of light. Art and meditation keep black and white stress
at bay. Wild juxtapositions of the new psychic spaces generates
a multi-sensory language for an increasingly multi-sensory world.
Meditation creates sufficient detachment to make this multi-sensory
process less exhausting. Our lives are becoming increasingly
psychic. We are ALL HERE NOW as the media moves us all at the
speed of light. Divination replaces logic. The empty spaces
between things is probed with artistic divination and spiritual
insurance provides extra protection. The psychic insurance is
fortified.
Harvest
of Gems is not just a novel with this new context in mind. It
is now also a divination tool, a psychic workbook, a work of
supreme literary art, and a cultural and spiritual dictionary.
Harvest of Gems is a new kind of book for a new kind of age....
It
has been such a pleasure working with you all. The Lamas send
blessings.
Tashi
Shok!
Michael
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